


Avon and Beyond

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [7]
Category: Blakes 7, Doctor Who, Kaldor City
Genre: Alien Sex, Body Horror, Bondage, Condoms, Electricity Play, F/M, Mind Control, Pegging, Sadism, Seduction, Time Travel, Torture, Wound Dressing, antigravity, antigravity sex, experienced reality, stress positions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 03:11:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13114767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: Blake's 7/Doctor Who universe crossover. Kerr Avon is on the run, looking for a new world and a new life. When he meets a too-friendly alien and tries to take advantage of her hospitality, he pays a price that will change his life forever. Set after the end of "Blake's 7" and before the Magic Bullet audio series "Kaldor City."





	1. A Contract for Trouble

Kerr Avon was hurt, but he was not dying. Not yet.

But if he didn't find a place to hide, soon, he would be dead. And dying after cheating death so recently seemed like a dreadful waste of effort.

He hurt. His skin was scored with burn marks, where his last line of defence had gone up in flames - but not before saving his life. Standing, he had piloted the stolen shuttle away from Gauda Prime, and into untracked space.

He had himself, this ship, and a deep loathing for the Federation and all that it stood for. He didn't want to go back to civilization. He wanted to find a new place, where nobody had ever heard the name Avon. Or Blake. He needed to find some colony where he could start again, start a new life. He had some - uniquely marketable skills. And he was ruthless enough to use them. But he didn't want to start at the bottom rung of that colony's society; he wanted some falling room under him, just in case of error. That meant money.

He set in his course and his search parameters, and then found the first aid kit. He stripped the tatters of his clothing from him, and laved burn salve into his wounds. Then he wrapped bandages over the salve, all of the bandages in the kit and down to the end of the roll. Until he was layered with gauze, head to heel. He found a too-large coverall and drew it over himself, before padding the command chair with the remains of his other clothes and gingerly sitting down.

Very gingerly.

* * *

The thief was full of self-righteous noble intentions, as the worst thieves often are. This one apparently had a strong streak of mysticism as well. Pilot Avva sighed and toyed with one of the control keys on the spaceship panel in front of her, as she listened to the thief's recorded message.

"When the constellations of the Fish are in alignment and the Shod Jewels are returned to our planet, it will signal the rise of a new dynasty and-" Avva hit another key and the message paused. A new display came alight and displayed a humanoid face fringed with reddish lobes like tiny flower petals along the jaw. A Sast face, like her own.

"Does this girl ever get to the point in this message?" asked Avva.

The other Sast nodded. "Her clutch stole the Shod Jewels, and is spending the family fortune to conceal them. She wants the Jewels hidden where nobody will find them until the time is right for a revolution. Or more specifically, when nobody will find them."

"Physical time travel?" Avva's own purplish lobes paled. "I thought we were keeping strictly away from that technology, Frit."

"This shows a minimal chance of interference in timelines," Frit replied. "You'll be going to an uninhabited planet, well off the regular space lanes. You leave the Jewels there, some hundreds of standard years in the future. Even if the thieves' conspiracy is revealed here and now, their planet's conquerors can search all they want and not find them."

"The Shod Jewels. Not the Crown Jewels?" asked Avva.

"No, they go in for sacred footwear and lots of ritual toe-kissing." Frit sat up a bit straighter. "Avva Omet-J, will you accept this offered contract?"

" I don’t have to take any passengers, do I?" Avva scowled, and Frit scowled back.

"We wish you weren't such a loner," he complained. "You should visit more."

"I like the company I keep," she said shortly. "No passengers?"

"No, Avva, no passengers. You pick up the cargo box, use an accelerator flagg to drag the Righteous Flea ahead to the chosen date, drop off the cargo and fall back to our time. Simple."

Avva drooped her eyelids in thought, and asked for the formulas of translation and probabilities of paradox. Once she ran those through her own computers, she decided to accept. Her palm print on her control panel, rather than a physical handshake, sealed the deal.

Once the Flea was set on her course to the flagg, Avva stretched in her chair and decided that it was time to inform her permanent companion of their new contract. She rose and stepped out into the main room.

It was a dull little room, with steel walls and doors and ceiling. The plain metal acted as a frame for the spectacular carpet, which was asymmetrically lumpy and pulsing with colour as though alive. It sat in the center of the room in its own shallow divot, and at the vibrations of Avva's feet moving across the deck, the colours raced across its surface faster, mauve overlaid with lilac and white.

She stepped on the carpet, and heard a delicious cry of pleasure and pain in her mind.

~Mistress!~

~Hello, Tragan,~ Avva thought back, with that specific part of her mind that she used to speak to him. ~We have a contract, and I'll want to be in my best condition. So I think I should take my exercise now. I hope you don't mind my piling all my heavy equipment on you.~

Grovelling acquiescence flooded her mind, and Avva smiled. Tragan used to be quite the nasty piece of work, before he had overstepped her bounds. A Naglon, sadistic even by his species' standards, broken out of prison by none other than herself. He had lashed out at her at the first opportunity, torturing and eventually killing her - he thought. But the tables had turned, the dice had rolled. Now he had been bio-formed into a flat slab of meat on her floor, and his mind bound to hers. He was her devoted slave. And every year he spent under her feet, another payment was secretly sent from the Parakon Corporation into the Sast accounts.

She carefully laid out the weights, the flexrods, and delighted in rolling the coordination spheres up and down him, leaving little trails of coldness across Tragan's warm flesh. Then she started her routine, and soon her sweat was pattering over him, hanging in the hairs that were carefully groomed to form a fringe around his edges.

She tried to do at least one hour of exercise a day, and often did two: even though the Sast were gene-engineered for space, muscles did sag in artificial gravity. And she wasn't as young as she used to be. So she stretched and pulled and gasped and clenched her teeth as her muscles burned. And listened to Tragan's mental sighs of delight at her every tread, her every touch.

Of course she could easily make his cries be those of pain. She controlled his nervous system, controlled whether it interpreted sensation as pain or as pleasure. In the past she had spent long happy times tormenting him to agonies of madness with the touch of a pin, or a feather, or just her fingers. But now her touch pleasured him, and he thanked her humbly for that blessing and begged for more.

After she was done, she showered and lay down on her carpet, and explained to him exactly what the new contract was. As she expected, it made him unhappy, and she savoured his unhappiness.

~Time travel,~ Tragan moaned miserably and mentally. ~It's forbidden to my species.~

~I won't tell if you won't,~ thought Avva, carefully poring over one corner of his fringe. She was searching for pink hairs, which she was determined to pluck if she found. She would not have him showing any signs of age. But his fringe seemed to be staying its usual warm mahogany shade all the way around, so she stopped and rested her cheek on him, feeling him pulsate softly against her touch. ~And it's not like I have left you any choice in the matter, Tragan.~

~No, Mistress,~ he whispered in her mind.

* * *

Avon was getting worse. There was no time to rest, no time to heal and recover. His body was fighting to repair itself; his will was fighting to keep him going. So he healed slowly, and stressed himself more. Eventually he was going to come to the end of his resources and collapse. How pathetic after all he'd endured, to be found in space by the enemy, helpless.

He needed to find a place to hide. His ship had enough power to make more than one landing. He was looking for a planet. Any planet. He needed to stop and give himself time to fully recover from his injuries, then move on from there to find his colony.

Avon reached absently for his forearm, and then restrained himself. He itched; his healing skin itched and burned. It was like being under the blasters again, but he knew that if he scratched he would only make it worse.

So, a planet. His search was fortunate enough to pick up something. A green world, the green of chlorophyll and living things. Oxygen, water, and plants - he could rest there, if he could make it.

He sincerely hoped that he wasn't about to land on a planet that was completely covered with oxidised copper. Or carved out of jade.

Piloting with all the skill he could drag out of himself, he set course for the planet, which his charts referred to only as T-113.

* * *

The accelerator flagg burned a blazing red against the black of space. It looked like a flowing transparent streamer of glowing fabric, thousands of units in length. One end contracted into a single point of searing red light, while the other end waved off into - elsewhere. Beside the flagg was a blinking space buoy, which Avva promptly scooped into the Flea's tiny airlock.

The cargo box was smaller than her head, and a peek inside showed jewel-encrusted shoes that would barely have qualified as thimbles for Avva. How big was this species, anyway? Avva hadn't thought to ask. But she carefully sealed and stowed away the cargo box, and dumped out the silenced buoy, before maneuvering into position near the flagg's 'end'.

She put the Flea into turbulence mode: all mechanical systems locked down, force-fields stiffening the hull, her own seat belts fastened, and even a neat set of padded clamps holding her beloved carpet in place. Carefully, slowly, she extended a gleaming steel landing claw. She was watching from three camera angles as the claw deployed, set itself straight, then lashed out and speared that burning point of light that was the flagg's sole solid manifestation, and also its start button.

The flagg latched onto the landing claw, which reeled back against the hull. This was the tricky part, and Avva held her breath. If the flagg did not root, it might disperse into nothing, or shear off part of the hull.

The flagg adhered itself properly to the Flea, and began to wave and ripple, gathering up the energies necessary to haul the ship into the future. Avva started breathing again. The attachment had been successful, and now she had only to wait while the flagg prepared itself.

She ran the calculations: it looked like she would have almost two full days on the other end of her trip, before temporal inertia sent her sliding back into the past. Since she was going to be dropping off the Jewels in a location that would soon be visited by the people who had stolen them (or, more likely, the thieves' descendants), any plant life she damaged in her trip should also be affected by their visit. She had to be careful; one slip in the future could create a fountain of paradoxes. Paradoxes that would probably be accompanied by certain unnatural things that would tear her, Tragan, the Flea, and everything else around them to pieces.

So she wasn't planning on stomping on any butterflies. Just in case.

* * *

In the future, there was a sudden churning of space. A burst of undulating red light, like a flower suddenly unfolding. And in the heart of the flower was a tiny yellow spaceship, which spun to orient itself, and then darted for planet T-113.

T-113 was remote and unnamed, inhabited only by plant life. Avva placed the Righteous Flea into orbit, and started looking for the three volcanic peaks that were her landmarks. Once she found them, she was to plot a point equidistant between them, and place the Shod Jewels there under a cairn. In and out, and then back home.

She was patient; she put the ship into a spiral orbit, to scan the entire planet. To pass the time, she watched some selections from her justly famous media collection. Tragan was beside her in her mind, watching along with her. She had only recently allowed him this privilege, of seeing directly through her eyes. Generally she only did it while she was sitting watching video: she did not want to risk having him start to identify too closely with her physical body. It might give him ideas about trying to take it over.

T-113 was annoyingly well stocked with metal deposits, which made it difficult to spot anything artificial that might be down there. And whoever had said it was inhabited only by plant life has not taken into account the massive herds of bigheaded herbivores that were currently eating their way across it. Perhaps they were a recent addition: abandoned pack animals, ship refugees. Or some terraformer had decided to strip the planet bare, and left a breeding pair of these things. She checked orbit, but couldn't find any buoys broadcasting Future Home of Meat Market, or restaurant adverts.

She slid into atmosphere, and hovered for a quick scan: no, those big heads were just anchoring big jaw muscles. These beasts weren't sentient. And hopefully, they would be no threat to her. So she headed for her volcanoes.

 

There they were, and fortunately there was heavy tree growth in the valley between them, strong and lush, sprouting out of generations of ash and volcanic debris. It didn't look like anything could stampede through and step on her, at least. It meant she had to land a little further away from her destination than she liked, is all.

She stripped off the light film of gauzy fiber she had been wearing, and put on her exploring gear: heavy puncture-resistant leggings, weapons both hidden and obvious, a stiff jacket with various sensors and repellers built into it. A heavy plasticised gorget that slid around her neck and rolled up over her jaw line. It was flexible enough to not impede her head, but it would protect the delicate tissues of her stripes and wattles. And liquid sunscreen, of course.

She decided to go pick the spot for the cairn first. No reason to go wandering about with the (invaluable) reason for her contract tucked under one arm.

One of the last things Avva did before leaving the Flea was strap a gravity plane to her back. This was one of the Sast's more subtle pieces of technology: it allowed the wearer to hover over a center of mass, nearly weightless. So if she happened to throw herself backwards, the plane would take effect before she hit the ground and send her slipping away. She could have fastened it to her front, of course, but then its field would have been tweaking at her arms as they moved, and she didn't like sliding around facedown unless she had to.

By now it was probably hideously out of date, completely superceded by more advanced technology. So what. It worked, that was all that mattered.

Before she put her gloves back on, she knelt and caressed Tragan's throbbing skin. ~Be back soon,~ she thought, and bathed herself in his emotions: love, devotion, anxiety.

~Take care, Mistress!~ he thought back.

* * *

"And to think," she said to herself a half-hour later, "that there are such creatures as nature-lovers!"

Those were the sorts who would have thought this jungle a paradise of alien diversity; she found it thorny, obstructive, tedious, and scratchy. But there weren't any bugs at least. The plants were sticky, hideously sticky, and they clung abominably, even to her naturally waxy hair and skin. More than once she wished that the Flea had a chemical propulsion drive, so that she could just burn her way to the drop-off point.

"Time travel means avoiding excessive disruptions of the time stream," she said aloud. "So instead of hacking my way through these things, I push them aside, politely." And kept pushing, being careful only to use the back of her machete.

She finally stumbled across a path where the plants were wilted and limp; it looked like an animal had come by, secreting something that killed them. Avva looked hopefully behind her, but the plant life she would have to wade back through was still hale and hearty. She tensed her shoulders in misery, then relaxed them, one side and then the other. She would make her cairn, THROW the damn jewelry box into it from the air and drop a rock on top. Then get into a stable orbit, and take a long, hot shower. And roll herself dry on Tragan.

She considered the path, and her own frustration at how long this was all taking, and decided to risk moving down it. It was heading right towards where she wanted to go. The telltale clipped to her sleeve agreed, flashing brighter as she approached the coordinates the computer had picked out.

At last! The telltale shone solid yellow, and there was even a tiny natural clearing here. The rocks were thick underfoot, and she flipped a few over with her toe. Perfect, and she could use the gravity plane to move them. She sheathed her machete and sighed with relief, inhaled - and paused. There was a smell in her nostrils, something warm and rotten.

"Hello," said a cold male voice behind her. "Please don't run, I'd hate to shoot you in the leg."

Avva widened her eyes, but did not move. She could hear unsteady footsteps behind her, shifting the small rocks underfoot. Whoever it was circled around to her left, and finally got to where she could see him.

He was barrel-shaped and intense, with sharp dark eyes. Standard biped, looked like a human. Avva's eyes picked out the unnatural lumpiness of the coverall he was wearing, and connected it to the ring of burned skin showing under a bandage on his wrist. It looked like he been burned all over, and was bandaged to match. His hand shook, but the blaster it held was still quite capable of killing her.

"Good," she looked up at the sky, a quick flick of her eyes and back, "afternoon, I believe. Am I disturbing you?"

"Not exactly," he said dryly. "I'm new to the neighborhood, and was wondering if you could recommend a good source of food and water?"

Avva looked him over again. He wasn't asking about the Jewels; maybe he wasn't looking for them. He certainly wasn't the same species as the thief, who had been a hexaped. His eyes were not sunken yet, but he was clearly dehydrated. Flushed with fever as well, she guessed. To give herself time, she asked, "I can understand not eating the plants, but what's wrong with the water?"

"It's all slimy. Strings of this stuff in it, I can't filter it out," he said, batting at a plant beside him in fury. The plant seemed to wither at his touch.

So much for not affecting the future. But when the future pulls a gun on you, it's hard not to interact. With delicate care, Avva hooked one finger into her jacket's harness and pulled out her water bottle. She stepped forward to hand it to him, and the man staggered and went down on one knee. His head lurched up desperately, along with the gun.

"Keep back!" he grated.

"You want me to squirt it into your mouth from here, maybe?" She sniffed. There was something very wrong smelling about this man.

"I," and he swayed. Avva slowly walked backwards, away from him. She shook the water bottle, and they both heard the gurgling from it. His eyes lit up with desperation.

"You aren't just dehydrated," she said. "You smell awful."

"I have not managed to fit a bath into my current schedule," he sneered.

Avva looked perturbed. "I mean, you smell like you have an infection or something. Are you supposed to reek of dead meat and vinegar?"

The man just knelt there. Avva backed away another step, and he said, "Stop!" With slow care, he braced the gun with both hands. "Leave the water bottle. If you please."

She paused for a long moment, and then made her decision. A soft underhand toss of the bottle; he flailed and managed to scoop it against his chest with his arms, while still clutching the gun. He fell back onto his rump; with one hand and his teeth he pulled the bottle top off, guzzling, gulping the water down. He didn't look back up until the water bottle was empty.

She was gone.

As soon as the man's eyes had closed at the sweet shock of the water hitting the back of his throat, Avva had toppled over backwards. The gravity plane started to hiss, and she found herself floating a hand width above the ground, on her back. She reached up and back with both arms, like a person doing the backstroke in water, and shoved with the outside of her palms and went flying over the ground, up the path and out of sight. She weaved from side to side as she moved like a frightened fish, to avoid any incoming shots, and tilted her head back just far enough to see where she was going. This worked until the path started veering away from the Flea. Avva jumped to her feet, hacked and stomped her way to the ship's hatch, and in. She didn't have time to poke the plants aside, she didn't have time to talk to Tragan. She had to think this out, right now.

She couldn't just leave the Shod Jewels here now; this strange man was sure to pry open the cairn out of curiosity. And if she killed him, or dropped him into stasis, what sort of paradoxes might result? He'd said he was new to the neighborhood. Probably not a hermit then. She drummed her toes on the floor. Perhaps she could persuade him to leave? She might have to repair his ship, heal his infection.

Or she could just let him die. If had no water, it wouldn't take more than a few days. She didn't have a few days though. Time travel using the flagg was like being pushed on a swing; you were shoved up, hovered for a moment at the top of your arc, and then back you fell. She was going to be falling back in time, in a day and three quarters, and she really didn't want to do it from a planet's surface.

So.

She rummaged through her storeroom, and came up with some standard Human ration packs she had lying around - at last she could get rid of them. She'd tried their 'ice cream' once, at her mother's insistence. Revolting. She filled another water bottle, and shoved it and the ration packs into her various pockets. Paradox had not shredded the stranger when he touched the water bottle, so apparently she was not bending Time overmuch by interacting with him.

Her plan was to find the man and get him off this planet in his own craft. If he'd crashed, well … hmm. She supposed she could just grab him and drop him on another continent. That way he couldn't get to the cairn. But if he had his own transport, it would be best to get him to leave using that. Tidier, less interference with the timeline.

She retraced her steps, and found the man stumbling doggedly up the path, not too far from where they had just met. He stopped at the sound of her footsteps. "More water," he said, and wavered on his feet. He was weaker than she had thought.

"Throw the gun," she said, with one hand extended to catch it. The other hand was clutching a dart thrower behind her back. After a long pause he threw it - sideways, off the path. The blaster vanished into the thick foliage.

Score one for him. "You have interrupted my private retreat," said Avva crisply. "If I asked you to leave, would you be able to?"

"I can fly," he said; he was shivering, even though the air was fairly warm. "My ship is fine. Please, food and water and I'll get out of your hair right now, I swear!"

Doubtful, in his condition. More likely he'd crash whatever he was flying. Making a big, visible mess, which was exactly what she was trying to avoid - her clients wanted to find the Shod Jewels intact, not under a wrecked ship. Dropping a ship on the Flea wouldn't do her any good either.

"A contract," she said. "I feed you and heal your wounds, and you leave this planet." She stared at him, and he stared back, all flushed face and dark magnetic eyes. In the back of her mind, she wondered if she might ask for something in the way of personal services from him, before he left. He looked like he might clean up nicely - very nicely.

"Do we have a contract?" she asked again, and he nodded. She tossed him a ration packet and he tore it open with his teeth, wolfing down the sugary crunchy stuff. Avva cringed.

"So. It seems you are my guest," said Avva. "Does my guest have a name?"

"Call me - Ka," he replied.


	2. Curiosity Makes Strange Bedfellows

Kerr Avon, current alias Ka, tottered up the path behind his mysterious saviour. The air seemed to be changing temperature around him, hot and cold, and his eyes were watering. His knees felt like over-oiled hinges that kept slipping free. After the second time he stumbled, the woman turned and scowled at him.

"This could take all day," she complained. "I think I'd better work something else out."

"What?" he said distractedly, as she came close, very close. Close enough that he could look down at the top of her head (her hair was short, black, and greasy-looking), and smell the sharp scent of her perfume.

"Here, I want you to fall on me," she said, putting one arm around his waist.

"I'll hurt you," he said, frowning. "I don't understand."

"Then I'll just have to show you," she said. Somehow her foot was behind his, and she leaned backwards and pulled. He fell forward with her underneath, and they landed - on thin air.

They were hovering above the ground. He could look over the woman's shoulder straight down at the fallen leaves, and see that she was somehow floating. And he was floating on top of her. There was a hissing noise coming from somewhere; for a wild moment Ka imagined that this woman was filled with helium gas.

"Let me get your feet up - there." Ka was now completely off the ground, with his ankles inbetween the woman's feet. She reached above her with her arms out straight, like some water strider insect, and shoved back and down. And they flew, or rather they floated very fast, just above the ground. Under normal circumstances he might have found this very interesting; right now he didn't, which told him just how weak he really was.

"I should really know the name of my hostess," he said, turning his head and watching the jungle flow past from a knee-height perspective.

"Avva," she said. "Hang on." She angled off to one side; here the path was barely a thread, and both of them lost some hairs to the sticky plants. Then something angular and yellow was in front of them, and they slid up a metal ramp and into either a miniscule spaceship or a very small house.

"Welcome to the Righteous Flea," said Avva. "My ship." Rather than rolling him off, she somehow turned and bent and went up one of the walls (Ka flinched), and then they both dropped onto their feet.

She carefully walked around him, sniffing. He let her do it, leaning with one hand against the wall. "Are you particularly sentimental about this garment?" she asked from behind him.

"No," he rasped, wondering if she had any more food.

"Good, because the whole back of it is soaked in plasma and pus. No wonder you stink! And it's going to hurt coming off."

"It hurts now," he pointed out. "Is there anything I could eat before you start debriding me?"

"First things first." She came back into sight, and pulled a short tube on the end of a wire from its holder in the wall. She touched it to his forehead and neck, and he suffered her to do it. Lights on the panel beside them flickered through the spectrum.

"Good, your infection seems to be a regular Terran type, not something exotic. That should make things easier." She looked at the displays again, scrolling through several screens of text too fast for Ka to follow. "You've got painkiller in your system, but not a full dose. Did you run out?"

"No," he said. "They were in pill form. There was no water to take them with, and they were too bitter to chew." Avva promptly filled another water bottle and gave it to Ka, along with three capsules that she said would bring down his fever. This time he poured a little water down the front of his neck as he drank; the coolness felt wonderful against his skin.

"If I'm going to make you comfortable while I treat you, I need to know the nature and location of your injuries," Avva said, in a neutral tone.

"They're from an energy diversion harness," he said, begrudgingly taking the water bottle from his lips. "It rechannels energies away from the body of the person wearing it, through grounding contacts. Energies like lightning, or electrical fields."

"Or blaster fire," she said. "But when it absorbs more than it can discharge…"

"You get a flash of light, a puff of smoke, and an extremely sore skin," he growled.

"Well then," she said with a bright smile, "I think a touch of antigravity is just the thing. Do you have any deep burns here?" and she touched the center of her stomach.

He shook his head no, concentrating on the water again, and she got a towel out of one of the side rooms, folded it around the piece of equipment that had been on her back, and gently helped Ka get down on the deck, face-down. The machine started to hiss, and he found himself floating above the metal deck, his fingertips and toes barely brushing it. The anti-gravity field pushed him up from the ground, and felt like lying on a smooth bed of infinite softness. His arms and legs tended to bobble upwards, as though he was floating in water, and he let them. He relaxed, completely. For the first time in days, he did not have to judge whether every move would scrape against one of his burns.

With a clattering noise, a bowl with a spoon in it was set in front of his face. It was full of something that looked like hot stew, and smelled absolutely wonderful. He took five fast bites, almost shoveling the food into his mouth with the spoon, and promptly grabbed the water bottle. The stew was wonderful, and spicier than it had first tasted; he breathed in through his mouth, cooling it.

"I'm going to start cutting your clothes off," Avva said, showing him a pair of blunt-tipped shears and a spray bottle. "I'm soaking the bandages in disinfectant and topical anesthetic; after the wounds are clean, I can seal them."

It made him very nervous to have someone working on him from behind, and he craned his head around, looking out of the corner of his eye to make sure she didn't pick up any other utensils. But for starters, she just scissored his coverall in an X-pattern, then peeled back the flaps to reveal his back.

"Here we are," Avva muttered. She raised the spray bottle and soaked down Ka's right shoulder, where infection was sending out red fingers of inflamed flesh over his back. He groaned out loud.

"Sorry, the anesthetic effect should start almost at once."

Ka groaned again. "No, it's working now. Keep going!" and she misted more of his exposed skin. The bandages were brown and red across his back, clumsily rolled around his torso; she was not looking forward to whatever was underneath.

"The anesthetic should be spreading under the bandages," she reported. "Let me know when you're numb, because otherwise when I start peeling you, you're going to hit the ceiling."

"Peeling?"

"Your wounds have crusted over, the bandages are embedded in the scabs. Burns like this secrete heavily, another reason you're dehydrated." She heard him scraping the bottom of the stew bowl clean, and asked, "More food?"

"Not yet," he said. "I want to make sure this isn't going to come up first." He tensed and relaxed the muscles of his back, revelling in the lack of pain. She watched as he did this, and did not wince as one bandage crackled and a trickle of red blood flowed across his skin, pooling over his spine. He said, "I can't feel anything, I think."

"Can you feel this?" and she did something.

"Just a faint pressure."

Avva raised an eyebrow; if he hadn't felt that pinch, he clearly was numb enough. The clock in her head was ticking, she didn't have time to bare him bit by bit. As pleasant a prospect as that might be, under better circumstances. She rose and got another bottle, and showed it to him; the contents of this one were pink and gelatinous.

"This is synthetic keratin, the same stuff your nails and hair are made of. I’m going to peel off the bandages, disinfect and clean your burns, and then seal them with this. The burned areas will be stiff until your skin fully heals and reabsorbs the keratin, but they won't leak and they won't leave scars. Unless you find scars aesthetic, and you'd like to save some?"

"No thanks," he said. "Start peeling."

She did, and it was a nasty, smelly chore. The bandages were deeply sunk into the burns, and she had to use both hands for leverage to rip some of them free; the flesh underneath was red and oozing. She layered on the anesthetic and the keratin with a free hand, mopping away the excess fluids, and only paused when he went, "Get a bucket or something!"

"Are you going to purge?" she asked.

"I am if you don't pile those bandages elsewhere - they stink!"

True, they smelled like burned flesh. His own to be exact. She got a pail with a lid, and piled the bandages and cleaning gauze inside instead of in a heap on the floor. Then she sprayed a little anesthetic on the back of her hand, and held it under Ka's face.

"What's this?" he asked, still methodically swallowing to keep his dinner down.

"Sniff, you'll numb your olfactory nerves enough that the smell won't bother you." He did, and the stench faded to a mild annoyance instead of a stomach-tumbler.

"Thanks," he said. Even better than the smell and the pain going away was the lack of itching. He had been literally sitting on his hands at times during his flight here, trying to keep from scratching at the burns and tearing the scabs off.

Now that he had a meal in his stomach that felt like it was going to stay there, he could finally look around and examine where he was. Small, and bare. Dozens of cabinet doors and drawers studded the walls and the ceiling. He didn't recognise the spaceship's design, maybe it was alien. There were four doors in the walls, along with the airlock/entrance (Ka always wanted to know where the escape routes were). There was only one decoration, but it was spectacular.

"Nice rug," he said. It was more than nice, it was gorgeous. It sprawled across the center of the room, and colours seemed to chase themselves across it in waves, rippling blacks and purples. "Very decadent. It's as though it were - moving?" And from where he was lying, it seemed obvious that it was moving; it puffed up and then down, like an oil slick on ocean water.

"It's alive," she said. "A shaped skin culture."

If Ka had known what Avva had done to the original owner of that skin while he was still a biped, he would have risen and fled into the jungle. It would have been safer than staying. But he hadn't heard that particular piece of what would be (to him) ancient history.

Avva grabbed the seat of Ka's coverall, and in two long slices the cloth was hanging off his legs and onto the floor. She took off his footwear, and tut-tutted at the scores where the contacts that had touched the ground had burned out, cooking themselves into his skin. She cut up the backs of his arms, and the coverall's top fell off; it was pinned to his chest by the whatever-it-was that had him floating in midair, but the rest of him was bare to the world. Avva started working on the burns that scored down his arms and legs, after shrugging out of her heavy protective gear and laying it aside. Now that she had him down to his skin, she asked, "Do you need me to turn up the heat in here?"

"No, I'm fine," he said. New energy was flowing through him as his fever dropped. And in fact, some parts were getting more energetic than others. Floating here like this and feeling well, feeling better for the first time in days was wonderful. Having a pretty woman intimately tending to him was downright arousing.

A woman: he wondered what she was doing here. The plants around her ship were still leaking sap, she must just have landed. She'd said she was on a 'private retreat,' whatever that was. He hoped it wasn't something religious. He was having some distinctly earthy thoughts right about now, as Avva's attentions had worked their way up his thighs. Now she was concentrating on the lighter burns across his lower back. Every time her fingers touched his buttocks, he shivered.

"Is the anesthetic starting to wear off?" she asked in a concerned tone.

"I'm not feeling any pain, if that's what you're asking. But I'm certainly feeling some sensations." The energy diversion harness had run down the sides of his hips and legs, not the front or the back. And it was around the front that the sensations were focusing most strongly.

Typical, thought Ka to himself. You survive some peril, and your body immediately demands that you reproduce your valuable genetic material in the nearest available female. Not that the female in question was a bad choice, if you liked delicate little pale things. Actually, her hair and complexion reminded him of someone else. Someone that he wouldn't have minded sharing some genetic material with, if they hadn't been on opposite sides of a certain conflict.

He was letting his fantasies distract him from the present situation, but came back to himself when he felt a sharp pinch on his bottom.

"The anesthetic is wearing off. You shouldn't try to deceive me," she said. "Lying to yourself about your condition is part of why you're in such bad shape, I think. 'This above all: to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day; thou canst not then be false to any man.' "

He recognised the quote. "Hamlet."

"My mother adores old Earth literature," Avva said. "So, you have pressure sensation now. Pain?"

"Yes, but not much. Is there anesthetic mixed with the keratin?"

"Some. Pain is a necessary tool, but using it to excess will blunt its usefulness. If you trip and fall on your burns, you'll notice, but you should be able to move and work and heal without constantly suffering." She went back to working on the burns down his side, and almost casually, positioned her hand on his backside and tilted him a bit. Her touch was somewhere between impersonal and caressing. And her hand just happened to rest on him again as she cleaned and sealed his other side.

Then she declared herself ready to start working on his front. She reached under him and turned off the antigravity device. While he held himself (and his burns) off the floor on toes and fingertips, she placed the device on his back and deftly flipped him over and onto it. Now he was floating on his back above the floor. "My my my," she said, admiring his engorged state. "You are feeling better."

Ka was staring at her face, lips parted in surprise. "What?" she asked, then realised that she had taken off her gorget while his back was turned, so to speak. She raised her fingers to her cheek stripes, touched the little lobes of flesh that dangled from them.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking away and then back. "I thought you were human."

"No, not at all," she said. "I hope you don't find my lobes unattractive."

"They're not what I'm used to," he said, which was true. But now that they were revealed, they brought out her too-pale complexion, made the purple cast of the skin around her eyes and lips look natural instead of sickly. She smiled, and the stripes turned a deeper shade of purple. He noticed that the tips of more stripes showed at the collar of her thin white shirt - and that the shirt was translucent. "Do they serve some function?"

"They're, ah, erogenous zones actually."

"So, everything that turns purple is an erogenous zone?" Ka laughed. "If only all women were so easy to figure out!" He reached out with a free hand and ran one finger under the bottom hem of her shirt, above the plain tights she wore. "How far down do they go?"

"A ways," she said, moving his hand aside and starting to spray the disinfectant on his chest. Working on his back had been done swiftly and impersonally; now she made the movement of her hands more sensual, and applied the anesthetic only where it was needed, so that she could brush him with her fingers, and let him feel it. Her pale eyes watched his, and watched his body's reactions to her touches. Positive reactions, to be sure. The burns were actually shallower here, a net of narrow lines instead of deep grooves, quicker to be bared and sealed. That made sense: the energy diversion harness would have been designed to protect the vulnerable torso and channel the energies downwards: as it burned out, the wires leading to the ground would have taken the brunt of the charge.

She was close to done now. With the stripes of the paler keratin against Ka's skin, he looked more like a male of her species. Not that she'd ever been race-biased when it came to flirtation. Her hands were working on the side of his hip, and her bare arm and elbow were playing fascinating brush-and-bob games with his erection, when he took her arm with one hand and said, "Stop."

She stopped at once. She moved her hands apart, and said, "I'm sorry if I have offended. The medical work is almost done, and I thought we could, well, celebrate your obvious return to good health."

"I do like celebrations," purred Ka. "It's just that-"

"Yes?" she said, raising her eyebrows and leaning forward.

"I really need to piss."

"Ah. One moment." Avva swiped the keratin container over the last open burn, then got up and helped him to his feet. She spoke to the ceiling. "Computer, multi-species variable-gravity personal waste-recycling unit, passive mode only." She gestured, and a camouflaged door in one of the walls opened. Ka stepped inside and was confronted with a porcelain and steel appliance of daunting complexity. However, it accepted his waste in the normal fashion, and he sighed with relief. A quick scan of the tiny room for any interesting weapons, though, came up empty. He really didn't have anywhere to hide a weapon at the moment, but he believed in being prepared.

He stepped back into the main room, and said, "If that's in passive mode, I'd hate to see it active."

"Any objection to a barrier membrane?" Avva asked coyly as he approached, holding up a semi-transparent ring of material.

"None at all," he said softly. He was not alone in being prepared, it seemed.

"Good," she said. Ka pulled her close, and they kissed. Her mouth tasted - strange. Not bitter, not sweet, just odd. Inhuman, of course. But the gentle touch of her tongue on his was more than welcome, and he pulled her closer.

"Hmmm," she hummed into his mouth. When he finally pulled away, she asked, "My own bed is rather narrow, but there's a guest room, the deck, the carpet-"

"If I'm going to have sex with an alien, I'd like it to be as exotic as possible. How about mid-air?"

"Good choice," she said, reaching out and dragging the antigravity device closer with one foot. She went to pick it up, but Ka pulled her back with his hands on her breasts. Holding her confined in the circle of one arm, he caressed them, watching the purple stripes that spiraled around them darken under his touch. He pressed his palm flat against one, and could actually feel the heat radiating from the stripes against his palm in a distinct pattern.

Of course the effect was rather muted by her clothes. And he wasn't wearing anything. Avva's hands were caressing the undersides of his arms, and her mouth was now on his neck, teasing and nibbling at his ear. So it seemed an opportune time to get her clothes off.

The thin white shirt peeled right off, and he slid his hand down the front of her tights, feeling the trails of heat from more of her stripes, and then a softly throbbing flame between her legs that was already dampening the cloth covering it. Her hands were exploring the contours between his own legs, cupping him, stroking fingertips chasing themselves up and down his shaft. He bit his own lip, then stopped and bit hers, gently. She inhaled deeply, and pressed herself against him, belly to belly. Her hand was trapped between them, flat against his erection, and finally she was stroking him, not just tickling and teasing, but long firm strokes that made him bound against her hand.

His hands went around her waist, then under the waistband of her tights. There were more hot spots back here, and he quickly fluttered his fingers up and down her spine, feeling the familiar rough hot flesh along each side of it. This woman was all over erogenous zones, and all so easy to find. So responsive, so hot. He slid his hands back under her tights and pulled them down, and she used her free hand to help him, stripping them down low enough that she could pull and kick them off with her feet.

They were both naked now, standing on the deck, touching each other intimately. She stared at him, finding the heavy sweep of his shoulders, the dark rough body hair, and the deft knowledgeable fingers all marvelously exotic and attractive. Ka was finding the source, or the focus, of all her stripes: between her legs was a area of proud flesh, raised and stippled all over with tiny lobes like the ones that ran along her jaw. He caught one between his fingers, and her hips lunged against his hand.

"Oh," she gasped. "Those are very sensitive. Almost as sensitive as - this." She ran a dampened finger over the edge of his cock's head, feeling the smooth flesh. Then she deftly applied the hair-fine barrier membrane, slowly rolling it down onto Ka's erection.

He pressed his mouth to her ear, trying to keep his voice steady as her fingers sent shivers up and down him. "Are the ones on your face just as sensitive?" From this angle he could see that they had visibly swelled, their colour deepening towards black, standing out stiff from her jaw. He could feel the heat of them against his own cheek, and her skin was glazed with sweat, sticking to his touch.

"Absolutely," she sighed. So he grabbed at her face with his mouth, slid three of her lobes into his mouth at once, and began to tease them with his tongue and teeth.

She went wild. Her hands both seized his erection and directed it urgently to rub against her, to rub between her legs.

"Wait," he said, releasing her. "I want to fly."

"Fly. Right." She reached out and snagged one of the antigravity devices' straps, and pulled it up. Setting the controls, she reached around him, and held it against his back. Pressing against him, rubbing herself against his chest, she slid her slick flesh against him and said, "Now fly."

He grabbed with both hands, pulling her up, poising himself at the entrance to her hot center, and then toppled backwards. As the antigravity field kicked in, it thrust him upwards and inside of her. She twined her arms and legs around his and held on for the ride.

Because it was like a ride, like a carnival celebration: he could pump and thrust as hard as he wanted, or move her side to side, her weight partially supported by the field. It was sex, it was life, and it was one hell of a ride. They cried out separately or together, and then clung so close they breathed each other's air. She twisted herself against his chest, feeling the tickling hairs, the smooth flesh and the slick cold keratin patches, while he felt the soft breasts and rough stripes hot and sweaty on him. At one point he pitched his hips a bit too sharply and the antigravity device started to slip, but Avva quickly seized him and it. Eye to eye, mouth to mouth, they rode and rode each other, sweat streaming and limbs shaking, until they both saw the moment of release coming and knew that it would be spectacular.

Avva came to her peak first, shouting, grinding down. Then, staring intently into Ka's eyes, she pumped and squeezed and drained the last drop of pleasure out of him.

She rolled off, slid gently down the antigravity effect and onto the floor. And as was her occasional habit, she dropped at once into fast, deep sleep.


	3. Light Fingers and Heavy Hands

Ka was not asleep. He carefully rolled himself off the antigravity device; which did not go flying into the ceiling. Instead it warbled a bit, then drifted away at an angle, sliding itself to what was probably a recharging station of some sort along the wall.

He looked at Avva, who was snoring soft and fast. The alien woman seemed completely asleep, but still he called, "Avva? Avva?" There was no response.

Well now.

He knew that there was water here, and food: the question was could he move enough to his ship to keep him alive until he made the colony world he'd been heading for. Bringing it over bottle by bottle, bowl by bowl was not really feasible. And it might stress Avva's admittedly broad generosity.

If he took the ship, plus its contents, this would not be an issue. It was an interesting option; he should investigate further. He went to the remains of his coverall and rummaged through the pockets, coming up with several small electronic devices. He also took a plastic bag from one of the pockets and stowed away the used barrier membrane in it: he was cautious about leaving samples of his reproductive DNA lying about. Who knows what they might be used for. Then he moved silently to the door that most likely led to the control room - ah.

The door opened to him, and inside was what looked like an explosion in a keyboard factory: banks of identical, unlabelled buttons and foot pedals (and buttons on foot pedals). There were control panels and switches everywhere: he stepped with care. And not a single pedal or switch or button was labelled, in English or in any other language.

He made a few tentative inroads on what he thought was the central control panel, but there was no way for him to interface his equipment - and he had no idea what sort of voltage was running through the wires and blocks of clear plastic he found inside. His detector showed no coherent readings at all, and he didn't want to risk burning out his devices.

However, learning to fly this thing would not be necessary if he took the ship, plus its contents, plus the pilot with him. It could be more sensible in the long term than simply abandoning Avva here. She might die, and who knows how many members of her unknown species were waiting in the wings to avenge her death.

He turned - and discovered that the door to the main room had silently closed behind him. And that there were approximately twenty dozen buttons arranged around the doorframe.

Damn!

* * *

Ka had felt free to explore the ship because he was alone, except for the sleeping alien. He did not know that there were two aliens aboard - and that one of them was quite awake.

Tragan had followed along with the revelry in Avva's mind, feeling her pleasure, undulating on the waves of sensation. Avva was happy, and shared her happiness with Tragan, and he was happy for and with her. Now he was wondering what this Ka was doing.

Tragan could not see, because his Mistress had not remade him with eyes. He could not hear, or smell. But he could feel the vibrations of Ka's steps, different from Avva's, heavier, and follow him that way. Tragan had chuckled silently to himself, his skin rippling waves of violet, when Ka had gone into the control room. He had chuckled more at the minute vibration of the door closing - as it was programmed to do when it sensed that the controls were being tampered with.

~Mistress?~ he queried with his mind; and she awoke instantly at his mental question.

~Tragan. Where's Ka?~

~I do believe that he is trying to tamper with the ship,~ thought Tragan, and his skin quivered with colour again.

~Naughty, naughty. After I was so generous, too! Where is he?~

~The control room. Locked in.~

Avva smiled, her eyes still closed. She opened them and whispered, "Computer, minimum volume. Identify entity currently in control room."

"Identity Ka. Tentative status: guest," the computer replied, so quietly that only the sharpest ears could detect it.

"Identify Ka's present activity."

"Ka has tried to access the auxiliary control panels with electronic devices of unknown type. Access denied. He has been confined. Awaiting orders."

"Change Ka's status. New status, prisoner. Ignore all commands from Ka. Computer, respond to subvocal commands."

"Acknowledged." The computer turned up its audio gains, and focused a vibrascope sensor directly on Avva's throat and face: it would read the motions of vocal cords and tongue even if her lips did not move, and follow her commands. She rolled to her jacket and took out the dart thrower, a slender finger-length tube almost exactly the colour of her skin. Hiding it in one hand, she rolled back. To the computer, she silently spoke, Open the door to the control room in twenty seconds. And then she resumed snoring, even as Tragan's mind chortled with hers.

~The game begins~, each thought to the other.

* * *

The door opened at the press of the sixth button he tried. Ka's eyes immediately jumped to Avva; she was lying on the floor exactly as he had last seen her, still snoring.

He didn't have any weapons to threaten her with, and he didn't fancy keeping her in a hammerlock while she flew the ship. He supposed he could tie her with the remains of his coverall, but the sounds of tearing it into suitable strips would probably wake her up. Pinning her down while he tore up the coverall and tied her would require about four hands, and he only had two. Knock her unconscious? Tricky enough to do with a human, without causing permanent damage: he didn't think he could risk it with an alien of unknown internal anatomy.

He smiled to himself; some differences in her anatomy had been extremely pleasurable.

He looked, but while he was relieving himself she must have disposed of the bucket of bandages, and the shears that she used to cut them. Damn. If only he'd kept another weapon on hand - but one of the flurry of blasts on Gauda Prime had hit his own weapon square on. The found blaster he'd thrown away in the jungle had barely enough charge to light a match.

Perhaps it would be safer just to grab the water and run. He could live without food for four days - but he wouldn't do well on a colony world without money. And he was unwilling to sell his ship. It would be like selling your own fire escape.

Valuables. Valuables? The antigravity machine would be quite a prize, but was there anything more discreet available? He tested the doors on two cabinets, to no effect. Then a third one that he had only brushed against opened, and the contents slid out on a series of velvet-lined trays. Ka looked at the contents and hoped that it was a surgical kit for extremely exotic and tough-skinned aliens. What it reminded him of was torture equipment. He pulled out a device that was half-bayonet, half-scissors, and all sharp. Then he gently pushed at the trays, and they dutifully folded themselves back up and away.

Now he was armed. He had to decide: take the supplies, or take the whole ship. He could cut up the coverall into strips now; if he tied Avva, he'd have time to move enough food and water for the trip. Then he could leave the scissors where she could get to them with some effort, and go. But was that better than making her fly him to the colony world? He'd either have to release her there, knowing where he was, or kill her out of hand.

To give himself more time to analyse the situation, he moved to examine the carpet. It was thick and rippling with colours; he prodded it with one finger and watched fascinated as a wave of blackness swirled out from the point of contact. It was like a supercharged chameleon. He'd never seen anything like it. It might be unique.

Unique was valuable.

He pinched at the heavy fringe of glossy hair that ran along the edge of it, and lifted it a trifle. It was heavy, centimetres thick. It would be difficult to roll it up - and that might injure it. The carpet bubbled and paled at his pull, but did not contract or otherwise move: apparently it was all skin and no muscle. It was certainly too heavy to carry. Taking the entire ship was looking more and more necessary, and now he had a weapon to control the pilot. He reached out and picked something off the floor, curious to do one more test before he bound Avva and informed her of her new status as his prisoner.

Tragan had been following along with Ka's movements, of course. When he was touched, it sent a bright line of pain shooting through him; then he felt the Mistress' mind interceding itself, adjusting his sensations. When Ka picked him up by the hair, it was not pain but keening pleasure, and Avva shared and approved the pleasure.

~I should pull your hair more often,~ she mused.

But now Ka was doing something else. What? He was still there beside Tragan, and suddenly something cold was being touched to his skin. A thin cold line.

Metal?

A KNIFE?!

~Mistress! He's going to cut me!!~ Tragan screamed frantically in his mind; and instantly Avva took Ka down. The dart thrower shot a crystallised shard of a potent drug, which hit Ka in the heavy veins of the neck. A spoon (the very one Ka had eaten his stew with) clattered from his relaxing hand, and he was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Avva rose and she was furious; even at the sight of the harmless spoon. Her mind was a churning flame of rage and hate as she grabbed Ka by his own hair and dragged him around, off of her carpet. Hers! How dare he threaten Tragan, frighten him! If she had been physically strong enough, she would have torn the helpless man into shreds on the spot and relished every snapping bone and torn sinew. She was ready to tear out his eyes and his tongue and his balls with her bare hands, right here, right now.

Somehow, she wasn't quite sure how, she stopped herself. She shook with unrelieved tension, staring at the unconscious man at her feet.

Tragan felt oddly humbled at being the focus of his Mistress' concern. He sent warm waves of faith and adoration flooding through his mind towards her, reassuring her that he was all right.

Her mind responded, came back into focus. She quickly examined Ka's little devices, checked with the computer records, and confirmed that he hadn't just been checking his stock prices. Ka had definitely been trying to override the ship's controls. And he probably hadn't taken the Traxian gill-spreader for cleaning under his nails, either.

She thought, ~I don't like people who try to steal from me. But I can't kill him; too much risk of changing the timeline. Ideally I should frighten and humiliate him so much that he leaves here at once. Any suggestions?~

~Sexual humiliation?~

~You know me too well, dear Tragan.~

A mental sigh. ~I've always found that was a wonderful way to break down humanoids. Some humanoids, anyway.~ Another sigh. ~I wish I had hands to help.~

Harshly she replied, ~Careful, Tragan. You are verging on forbidden thoughts.~

He mentally bellied to her, abjectly insisting that he had no wish for a body, no desire to be humanoid again. No desire at all. He was eternally content, purely blessed to lie here and worship at her feet. She reached out and absently stroked his bubbling skin, soothing it with her touch.

Now that she knew there was another ship here, somewhere, she could send her ship's sensors feeling out for it. They did, and reported that Ka's ship was flight-ready but had no onboard weaponry sufficient to damage the Flea. Good; she wouldn't have to worry about a counterattack in space.

She went to one of the locked cabinets and opened it, and pulled out a gun with flaring spirals along the barrel. She let Tragan see the weapon through her eyes, as she loaded it with what seemed to be elaborately etched needles. ~You recognise this?~

~It's an Experienced Reality transmitter implanter, Mistress,~ he thought. ~You'll be able to feel everything that he feels, and with needles of that size, You can also control his actions.~

~Yes, but I'm not going to, dear Tragan. You are.~

She pressed the barrel of the gun against Ka's temple, and pulled the trigger. There was a thudding noise as the needle slipped through his flesh and into his brain; it would dissolve over a period of weeks, and have no long-term affect on him. It had been tested on humans before, to great success.

Her hand was shaking as she ran a needle through his other temple. Thoughtfully, she dabbled a little anesthetic on the tiny punctures. They were almost invisible anyway. Ka would have a bit of a headache, of course. But she was certain her upcoming actions would be enough to distract him.

Tragan's mind was a wide-open blank of confusion. ~You will let me control him, Mistress? Me?~

~That's right.~ There was a cap of steel mesh in the locked cabinet as well. A person wearing this ER headset would be able to feel the sensations and emotions of Ka, directly, mind to mind. And this was a transmission rig as well: it could control Ka like a puppet, but without him knowing who was pulling the strings, or even that there were strings at all. A person implanted with ER needles could be willed to do anything, even commit suicide, and he would do it.

Avva was excited, more excited even than when she was seducing Ka. This feeling was hotter, more immediate. Much more dangerous. She was giving Tragan a body that he could control again, and if he decided to, he could easily use it to strangle her, get his revenge. Even, perhaps, gain his freedom. She was betting her life against Tragan's conditioning, then her skills at combat against his in mind control. She hadn't done anything that made her feel this alive in years. She let Tragan feel that excitement, but did not share the reasons behind it.

Avva carefully fastened the spread mesh onto a heavy rubber mat, and then laid that mat on top of Tragan. His skin pulsed mauve with anticipation. He was full of excitement, as he reached out and felt Ka's unconscious shape as though it was his own. The cool weight of the deck against Ka's cheek, the dampness of Avva's fluids still on his thighs. He tested; tried to make Ka's left hand clench.

~It clenched,~ thought Avva. He heard through Ka's ears as she came closer, and then the sudden shock of her hand on Ka's flesh, touching that clenched fist. ~Ride him well, dear Tragan. Enjoy yourself.~

Tragan's mind was full of plans. Awful, awful plans.

* * *

Ka woke up and did not remember falling asleep. He was lying on the floor, and he had one hell of a headache.

"Are you feeling better?" asked a concerned voice. Avva's voice.

"What happened?" Ka said, feeling groggy and yet strangely agitated.

"Ah, I should have warned you about trying to move the carpet. You got stung."

"Stung?" Ka examined his hand, and saw no marks. There was a black rubber mat on top of the carpet near him, though, as though to shield its surface from touch. The thing was poisonous, apparently.

"You've been unconscious only a couple of minutes." Avva's feet were beside him, he noted absently that the cuticles around her toenails were tinged with purple. "But that was long enough for the computer to show me some fascinating footage of you trying to bypass the auxiliary controls, and then obtaining a weapon."

Ka wavered, now on his hands and knees. His instinct was to knock her to the floor, force her to fly him off this hellish planet. The bayonet/scissors were right there by his hand. But what he felt was shame. Burning, miserable shame.

Here I am with nothing, with everything I have devoted myself to destroyed by the Federation once and for all. I am here wounded, with no supplies, dying. And a woman comes down, gives me sustenance, food and water and touch. Gives herself. And what do I do? I betray her. The instant she falls asleep, I'm plotting to take her ship, steal her possessions, and even abduct her!

Of course it was not really Ka wallowing in this guilt; it was Tragan, projecting his own ideas inside Ka's head, and following along with Ka's feelings. He could plant the sickness of guilt in Ka's belly, and amplify it. He knew the darkness in his mind, and coaxed it out, let it run free. He could feel the shuddering of weakness in the man's limbs, and increased it, make Ka's hands slide out from under him so that he sprawled at Avva's feet.

"I'm sorry," Ka said. And a part of him wondered why he was saying this, why he wasn't fighting, fighting back, scheming, trying to outwit or outfight her. That part of him was strong, but Tragan was stronger. He had played this game before - although not since he met Avva. And Tragan found his control finer than ever before. He could feel the deck plating under Ka's bare stomach through his prisoner's senses, and made him move, had him crawl to Avva's feet.

Avva's foot lashed out, and grabbed Ka by the chin with limber toes. Tilting his head back, she looked down on him. Her arms were folded severely behind her back, and the stripes that V'd down her torso were pallid and flat-looking. "I think you owe me," she said. "First, truth: what do you need to leave here?"

"Water, enough for four days. Food. Trade supplies, money. And," Ka swallowed, "your forgiveness?" His dark eyes stared up at her, deep and pleading.

Avva leaned forward, balancing smoothly on one foot. "Earn it. Now."

~He's telling the truth. At least about the water, food and supplies,~ Tragan confirmed. Delicately, he loosened his grip; let Ka's mental controls ride slack. What would he do? He could read Ka's feelings, and knew that he would try to worm his way out from the situation. But Tragan gave him more rein, and more. He wanted to feel his rebellion, and then delight in smashing it. He looked forward to undermining Ka's defiance and confidence, bit by bit.

"Perhaps we could count our previous actions, with the antigravity and all, as sort of a down payment?" suggested Ka. "You seemed to enjoy it."

"Oh, I did. But I am a woman with many avenues of expression when it comes to the arts of love. And some of those avenues have lots of twists and turns." Her stripes warmed back to their normal purple, or perhaps a bit darker. She let go of his chin, and stood with her legs a little spread. "I was thinking of taking you for -"

That was when he attacked. Scooping up the weapon, he head-butted her directly in her bare and vulnerable crotch, anticipating that the pain would drop her and let him get the advantage.

At least, that was his plan. But at just the wrong moment, a wave of weakness swept over him, softening the taut muscles of his thighs, sending him floundering across the deck instead of striking and laying her out. She skipped aside, easily evading his attack. The alien weapon flew from his hand and slid out of sight under one of the cabinets. He cursed.

"Naughty," she said approvingly. Her arms came from behind her back, and locked a heavy steel manacle around one of his wrists. The manacle had a short length of chain attached, and the end of that chain somehow fastened itself to the deck too strongly for him to move. Then she backed out of reach.

He tried to move it; lunged against it, finally got one knee on each side of the attachment and pulled with all his strength, hearing his muscles crack with the strain. But it was no good. He was caught.

Avva, who had been watching his struggles with approval (while sharing Tragan's delight at the deftness of that attack's fumbling), said softly, "Contract."

He stopped struggling and glared at her, lower lip jutting in what was not quite a pout.

"I feed you and heal your wounds, and you leave this planet, that was our contract. I thought I had made it clear that you, singular, in your ship, would be leaving. Leaving by yourself. And not in my ship."

"Let me go," he growled.

"I am prepared to let you leave. But first," she held up one slim finger, "you need to earn that forgiveness."

His scowl grew darker, and Avva's mouth frowned in response. "Along with that forgiveness, I am prepared to let you earn water and food for your trip. Even though, by the terms of the contract, I could just kick you out the door now and demand you leave."

And that was true; she had fed him. She had healed his wounds. Bedding him had just been a bonus, which he'd blown and more, by trying to steal the ship. Now the debt was all one way. He had to pay her back.

"Unfasten this," he said. She seemed to make no gesture, but the chain abruptly popped loose. He stood, slowly, looming over her as she came closer. She stared up into his eyes.

"My forgiveness is surprisingly easy to earn, you'll be pleased to know," she said, ignoring the hand that was reaching for her wrist. "I'm very fond of-"

He grabbed her wrist to twist her arm behind her back, and immobilise her. She slid away; her skin was slick, waxy almost. He'd noticed it somewhat while they were touching, but he hadn't realised it would give the advantage in a fight. He also hadn't realised, until his arm was almost yanked from its socket and he was dragged to the deck, that Avva could somehow make the end of the chain leap as though magnetised and fasten itself to the floor, even when he was standing. Deft fingers locked a second manacle around his other wrist, and he was on the floor, trapped on hands and knees, facing the carpet. It had turned mauve with little lilac spots rippling all over it. He tried to follow the dots with his eyes, tried to distract himself from the mush of confusion inside his head. What was happening to him, why couldn't he fight? Was he drugged?

No, he decided. He was just pushing himself too hard, too fast. He hadn't recovered enough for a fight. And now that he'd picked the fight and lost, he was going to have to take the beating.

"Ka is just not the name for you, you know," said Avva, as she rummaged around in one of the cabinets behind him, out of sight. "You need something more rolling. How about - Kaston? There's a lovely sounding name, it's got the slithery S right up against that hard T, and the long N."

Ka had more immediate concerns. "What are you going to do to me?"

"Fuck you."

"Ask a stupid question …"

She came around Ka's right side and let him see the slick purple phallus that had been affixed to her crotch. It was short and thick and arrogant in its jut from her groin. It seemed to blend into her own flesh with a hundred ropy strands, like a plant, and he wondered if each strand was affixed to one of her lobes.

Ka gritted his teeth. He'd done things, in prison, on long ship voyages, for lust and for revenge, that were along these lines. He hoped she knew that humans required extra lubrication.

But he hadn't given up quite yet. He subtly shifted his weight to one knee, then lashed out with his other leg and tripped her. And it worked! She fell to the deck with a shriek, and he lunged out, clamping his leg across her and dragging her towards him. There was slack in these wrist chains, he could raise his hands off the deck. High enough to get at least one hand around her neck.

Her slipperiness saved her again; she wiggled and slipped away from his awkward hold. Her lips curled, and the attachment points for Ka's wrist chains started to slide across the deck. Further and further apart. Slowly.

The tension forced his hands down onto the floor, and apart. Ka fought the manacles, and Tragan riding invisible and unknown in his mind encouraged him to fight, thrilled to his anger, his desperation, and then the pain as the chains forced his arms out at the shoulder, as his chest touched the floor, as he felt the joints of shoulders and elbows start to stretch-

He cried out, and the chains stopped.

~Oh yes,~ thought Tragan.

~Oh yes,~ replied Avva, admiring Ka's pose. His chest was tight to the deck, and his knees were awkwardly spread, his back bowed as he fought to free himself. He was completely exposed to her, every secret crevice laid bare. Just the way she wanted him. He drew his knees together and up but could not tuck them under his body; he was too close to the floor. His bare feet curled helplessly, unable to cover his backside from her gaze. Or from anything else. The pink slashes of the keratin sealing his wounds blended in with his skin, which was covered with dark hair. His dark skin was even darker on scrotum and cock and around the tiny orifice that she could see between his cheeks, tight already in fear.

"Ka," she said, "I could chain your feet as well, stretch you like a bit of elastic - or I could give your arms some slack." She knew that she was going to loosen his bonds, this pose was putting unnatural strain on his diaphragm. But she liked the idea of tormenting him with the possibility of leaving him in this excruciating position.

~Must You ease the chains, Mistress?~ Tragan thought plaintively. ~To feel You take him while he smothered, ah, that would be divine!~

~Cleaning up after he chokes to death on his own vomit won't be,~ she replied. ~I will take my pleasure of him and then we chase him off. He needs to leave here, alive. You may let him fight now or submit, as you please.~

"Are you ready to earn my forgiveness?" she said dangerously, abruptly stepping to his side and sitting across his shoulders. From here there was no way he could kick at her. He whined as her weight drove the air out of his lungs. She heard him methodically struggling to get his breath. Her hot crotch and its attachment were pressed against his spine; she amused herself by grinding her hips a bit, feeling the base of the phallus rub against him and rub her as well.

Then he said, "I am ready to earn your forgiveness."

"Ah," she said. "Lovely."

"And food and water!" he blurted out.

"But of course." The chains holding his manacles moved, a little, and he found he could draw breath again. Avva had moved, and now knelt astride him, one knee to each side and her feet touching the deck on each side of his head. She slid one hand down his spine, down to the bottom of his back and lower, and then over the valley between his bottom cheeks. He tensed, futilely. But her hand was just resting there, covering him.

He turned his head to one side and laid his cheek against the cold deck, breathing deeply, trying to focus himself. He could see her foot right there, and imagined what it would feel like to sink his teeth into her, tear at her, tear her apart. His sudden fury unnerved him. He was never going to get out of this mess in one piece if he did something stupid like that while he was still tied.

She had a little jar of lubricant within reach, and she opened it one-handed, scooping up a generous portion and then rubbing it over both of her hands. She clapped her hands to Ka's arse, and felt him jump. And then she started to rub.

Slowly, sensuously, she rubbed him, feeling his tight muscles fighting her. Her fingers worked over the two smooth mounds of muscles, feeling the arch and tense of his flesh, watching how he fought as her massaging hands pried his cheeks just a little bit apart, and then let go. And parted them, and relaxed. He was clenching himself tight, but soon her fingers were caressing the crease between his cheeks, finding the small orifice there and touching it, rubbing it, gently mounding the lubricant over it and then softly rubbing it into the wrinkled hole.

"I hate you, you bitch," Ka spat abruptly.

~O Mistress, I love You!~ thought Tragan.

"I know," Avva said, to both of them. "This is all for you." She stood, pivoting on one foot, moving until she was standing behind Ka's captive form. She waited, to see if he would kick.

Tragan and Ka were locked in a battle of wills that only one of them knew about. Ka was fighting himself, he thought, fighting his irrational wish to surrender, to give up completely. Tragan feasted on his fear, his confusion, and finally overwhelmed him with a helpless desire to submit.

Ka did not kick, and she went to her knees behind him. Softly, she rubbed the tip of her phallus against his darkly flushed flesh, and smiled when he did not flinch. His knees were still awkwardly drawn up, raising his arse to her; she reached under him with one slick hand and found his fear-softened genitals, cupped them.

~Get ready,~ she warned Tragan.

"Are you ready?" she said aloud to Ka, watching the trembling strain in his shoulders and thighs.

"Yes," he ground out. "I want … to earn your forgiveness." It wouldn't be that bad, he assured himself. He could (he gasped as he felt the phallus' head touch its target) he could just pretend that nothing was happening. He could look at the carpet, the rippling white-and-pink carpet. Pretend nothing was happening-

Avva leaned over him, the tips of her breasts brushing his back. The phallus she had donned was made of very responsive material, and she did not need to use her hands to guide it. Slowly, carefully, she pried him open, slipped herself into his tight hotness. The phallus transmitted the heat beautifully: it was as though she could feel her own flesh rubbing against his soft membranes. She found her balance and began to thrust.

Ka was trying to relax himself, trying not to let this invasion of his body inflame him. But he couldn't pretend nothing was happening, it was too immediate: the chains on him, her weight on his back, her cock slipping in and out of him, then stopping just at his entrance to stretch him painfully wide with the bulbous head before plunging deep. And then doing it all over again. He was rising to her touch, his buttocks starting to thrust back in time to her assault. He justified this desperately, telling himself that he did it so that it would hurt less, so that the angle of penetration didn't batter him raw. Her slick hand was fuller now, as his flesh swelled with involuntary passion.

She spoke to the computer silently, asked it to arrange a certain piece of specialised equipment within reach of her free hand, and activate it when she signalled. Then her mouth was occupied with her little cries as she gasped, bathing herself in the feel of her prisoner's flesh, bathing again in his fear and shame as Tragan took it in and shared it with her. It was wonderful, it was marvellous, raping him like this.

Ka was shaking his head no, sweat trickling down his face. He couldn't give in, he couldn't bear it. It hurt too much. He had to fight back! He gathered up his will, painfully contracted his stomach muscles, and then twisted straight, thrusting to break her beat, to buck her off.

She laughed, a silvery laugh. She reached to her left and the computer poured an arrangement of metal bars and chains into her hand. It was a bridle and bit, and she slipped it into Ka's open mouth and let it clamp itself to his face.

Then he really went wild: screaming around the bit, kicking and heaving. She rode him, using the metal reins to keep her balance. The way he thrust against her was ecstasy, every centimeter of her stripes was black with passionate heat. His motions were transmitted by the phallus, transmuted into wonderful pressure on her lobes and groin. When he flung himself flat to try and crush her defiling hand, she withdrew it and he only succeeded in painfully mashing his own erection against the bare deck. His cry of pain was a delicious fillip to Avva's pleasures. She pounded into him as he lay helpless and gasping.

He was flat on the deck now, unable to even speak as she thundered through him, faster and faster, driving herself on to her peak. He fought himself, fought the friction on helpless nerves and flesh that was both tormenting him and arousing him, utterly outside his control. Please let her finish, please let this be over, he said to himself desperately.

~I wish this would never end,~ Tragan thought; and Ka heard that thought as though it was his own. And he cursed that part of himself that would desire such a vile thing.

She knotted his reins around one hand and pulled, and he reared up, off the floor, his back bowing in an arch. Her own back was arched to follow the new line of his body. The metal bit was cutting his mouth, and he fought to arch back even harder. His manacles felt like they were about to tear his hands off. She grabbed his hair and turned his head, and Ka found himself staring into his own eyes. His reflection in the metal wall, where he could see her cock plunging into him again and again, her breasts bobbing with exertion, and her face close beside his, ecstatic at the sight of his suffering. He was hauled backwards again, to see Avva's flushed frantic face. She drove her mouth down on his bound one, and gave the computer the signal.

Current burst alive in the metal bit, running screaming through both their bodies. Ka screamed at the fresh pain; Avva screamed, her teeth tight in Ka's lip. She took in the taste of his blood, the feel of his frantically writhing body, the smell of his fear. And Tragan sucked in the terror and bewilderment and pain from Ka's mind, and felt Avva's pain as well, as she shared it with him, shared everything, sight and sound and smell, and he echoed back emotion and thought to her. Together, they possessed Ka entire, and came to their climax as one. And Ka joined them helplessly, thrashing out his own release against the slick floor and then collapsing.

The computer, sensitive to such niceties, turned off the electrical current. Avva's jaw, which had been locked shut by the electrical pulses, fell slack. Slowly, she raised herself from the prone body of her captive, and withdrew herself.

"Now I forgive you," she said simply.

Ka was stunned to blank incomprehension. Everything around him seemed too bright, but he was too shocked to even close his eyes. That had been … unbearable. Horrific. And yet deeply, involuntarily, undeniably exciting. He shivered, wishing he could shake the memories out of his mind, but he couldn't; they lay there like dead weight on him. He supposed that he was still in shock.

He lay there, while the cheerful Avva put away her toys and her appliances, filled what she called a waterpack from the ship's stores and stuffed its outside pockets with freeze-dried rations. She stuffed the remains of his coverall on top, along with his computer probes. She hummed a little tune to herself as she picked him out something new to wear. From where he lay, he noticed vaguely that even the rug seemed to be in shock; it was lying quite still and flat, and was white as the sheet it now resembled. When Ka finally tottered to his feet (after a friendly kick in the ribs), he looked down on the deck to see if he had left something behind. His soul? His name? He wasn't sure. He felt like something had fallen out of him, and an invisible intruder had snuck in and occupied the place where it had been.

He pulled on his boots and the loose tunic she offered and went to the door, slinging the heavy waterpack up onto his back. He tensed for the expected pain, but there was none. His injuries were better than he thought - or maybe it was just that the waterpack harness was padded. His thigh muscles jumped still from the strain of his unnatural poses, but he thought he could walk as far as his ship before collapsing.

Even now he could turn and hit - but no, he cringed at the thought. What she might do to him if he struck out again, and failed, he didn't even want to contemplate. He just wanted to get out of here, now! But he paused at a touch to his shoulder.

From behind, Avva looped a heavy necklace of alien design around his neck and shoulders **.** His fingers moved unbelievingly over it: gold and platinum links, lozenges blazing with mysterious gems set along its length - it was a fortune in material, never mind the exotic art of it. And she'd thrown it around his neck the way you would throw candy to a baby.

"A pretty collar this would make for you," she said. "You'd look very decorative tied at my feet." She sighed, elaborately. "But no. I keep around me only the things that I truly love. So perhaps you should leave now, yes?"

Ka moved down the ramp. As he staggered away from the Righteous Flea he started to feel more himself, more like Avon. He spun and faced her before plunging into the jungle. "I pity the man you fall in love with!" he snarled. "You'll tear him apart!"

"Too true," she said, her stripes visibly swelling and blackening. "Too true." Her crossed arms did not disguise the weapon she held, nozzle pointed at the retreating Ka to encourage his departure. The path he retreated down was wide with wilting plants now; it seemed that they were allergic to humans.

As Ka's ship thundered through the atmosphere and away, the Righteous Flea did a hop and skip that would have been the pride of her namesake. Above a pile of loose boulders she spun, and gravity fields formed the rocks into a circle, a wall, a cone. The Flea stood on end, long enough for Avva to slip out the door and, clinging to the hull with a magnetic clamp, drop the Shod Jewels into the cairn and shift a stone to close the top.

Then she went inside, and the Flea sealed herself. Avva sent her ship low over the jungle, circling the planet, allowing its metal deposits to mask her trail. It was time to go off-planet, and prepare for temporal inertia to catch up with the Flea and send her sliding into the past.


	4. Masks for the Memories

Once his ship was safely in space, Avon tore the tunic off his body, wiped himself, and thrust the stained cloth aside. Be damned if he'd have anything that woman touched near him again! He'd arrive on his colony planet bare-naked if necessary. Deliberately, he went into his mind and wiped the name Ka off his list of aliases. He would never say that name again, never!

He sat, taking the weight off his overstressed legs; then winced as abraded tissues rubbed against each other. Trying to take his mind off the pain, he touched the heavy necklace, his hands absently weighing it, calculating. Here was a chain on him that he could not discard so easily. It was all he had to trade, except for high-end skills that required certain situations to demonstrate. Then he clutched at his throbbing head, and wished he could forget how he'd earned it.

He'd never felt so erratic, so twisted up inside before. Had she drugged him, and it was wearing off? He really did feel like something in him had died, or come to life. Hopefully it was just a minor side effect of dehydration, rehydration, alien medication, fornication, and a dash of rape and electrocution on top.

Avon resolved to put it behind him. Leave it all behind: his name, his deeds, everything. Forget it, and start over. Free, far away from the Federation. He needed to rebuild himself, mentally as well as physically. To build a new self. Now that his body was healed (he rubbed his hand over his bare arm, feeling the alternating slick and soft patches of keratin and skin), he wanted to sit down while the ship flew itself, and judge himself. Figure out just who was this man once called Kerr Avon, and what he was going to become.

He would never realise that it was the transmitter needles (now slowly dissolving in his brain) that had held him during that intimate punishment more firmly than chains. Tragan knew this game well, and he had drilled into his captive's mind again and again, on conscious and subconscious levels, that he deserved this punishment, that it was just, that he would not return for revenge. That he would run and not come back. ER technology had never been sold to the human empire, after an aborted initial contact with the old United Nations and the alien Parakon Corporation some hundreds of years before. Avon had no idea of what had really happened aboard the Righteous Flea. If he had, he might have found the tiny punctures at his temples, might have realised that he had been a puppet to someone else's desires. Realised that the irrational feelings and wishes were not his own hidden desires, but jokes inflicted on him by a master sadist.

Instead he would put these terrible memories aside, try to forget them. He would build a new life for himself, on a colony world that had never heard of the Federation. But for months and years afterwards, he would have dreams where he fought some shapeless, horrible monster whose colour kept changing, and that whispered the vilest obscenities into his ears. And nightmares where he embraced the monster, and made its obscene desires his own.

* * *

The loft into space was uneventful, and Avva broke orbit quickly. Keeping the bulk of T-113 between her and Ka's trajectory (just in case), she moved out of the system's orbital plane, into cold and empty space. Quickly running the projections, she couldn't see anything that would be moving into this location within the next handful of centuries. When the temporal inertia started to pull the Flea, it might well drag her a few thousand kilometres in space before she started sinking in time. Out here, it wouldn't accidentally pull her into an asteroid or a sun.

She went over the bonded Sast cameras, and confirmed that they had captured the footage of her building the cairn and leaving the Shod Jewels. The transmission of that film would release the second half of the contract's payment into her personal fund.

She also checked that her own, personal recording equipment had captured Ka's seduction, rebellion and earning of forgiveness. The Experienced Reality sensation track made a wonderful addition to the video and audio feeds, and she looked forward to replaying it at her whim.

Nothing to do now but wait, and savour her memories. She lay on Tragan, still damp from the shower, and they both reviewed their memories of Ka, comparing them, swapping little grace notes of pleasure and pain.

~You let him attack me twice!~ she thought in a scolding tone.

~I could not resist, Mistress. He was so primed to fight, so determined to win. I had to let him fight You and then make him fail. To drink in his shame and humiliation,~ Tragan gloated. ~It was incomparable pleasure, Mistress. I only wish it could have gone on longer.~

~In a few hours, the temporal inertia we've established will kick in and start pulling us back into the past,~ she explained. ~Leaving behind something small, like the Shod Jewels, won't affect that. Taking back a passenger definitely would. We could end up anywhen, helplessly ricocheting from time to time.~

~Time travel is best left to madmen,~ thought Tragan. ~And Ka was very close to mad. A paranoid killer, on the run. Not the sort of person one would want to associate with.~

~Unless you have him in chains, on his knees.~ They shared a mutual mental laugh.

Avva ground her shoulders deeper into Tragan's throbbing surface, and sent his skin rolling with a rainbow of delighted violets and reds. ~We'll go back and I'll take some Outer Rim assignments.~ She scowled, and her fingers drummed on the surface under her which rippled with every touch. ~No more passengers. I'll kill the one who really takes blade to you, Tragan. You're mine. All mine.~

Avva had frightened herself badly, when she had lunged at Ka with murder in her heart after thinking he was about to hurt Tragan. She had almost gone completely over the edge. If he had just tried to steal something, or even steal the ship, she'd have let him go with a striped hide from one of her whips. If he'd attacked her, she might have crippled him. But for the crime of frightening her carpet, she'd not only assaulted Ka sexually, she'd implanted him with an ER rig and let Tragan play his own games with him, simultaneously. They had probably scarred the man's mind for life. And the scariest thing was, she really didn't care, even though she knew that she should. After all, he was here in this time, and she would soon be retreating to the past. In Ka's time, she was probably long dead of old age.

She thought she saw a strand of pink among Tragan's thick hairs out of the corner of her eye, but when she rolled over (Tragan groaned in delight at the feel of her breasts rubbing over him), it was just a trick of the light.

But still. He would not live forever. She would not live forever. She rolled onto her back, and closed off that part of her mind that communicated with Tragan. She was thinking for her own reference, not his.

She would die someday. Her species was created with skill and craft, and was long-lived - but not immortal. Tragan had said he might live another hundred years, and that was before she'd had him transformed. How long could he live now? Fifty? Two hundred? Five hundred? What if she died before him, left him alone?

What would happen to him? He was completely helpless in his present form. Would she arrange to have him killed after she died? A merciful death, that she could accept, but the idea of having him fall into uncaring hands who would ignore him, or worse yet, sell him to actively cruel hands - No! Not for her Tragan, not ever!

Her breath stopped for a moment, as she realised that there was a way.

It was illegal and expensive and would be difficult to conceal - impossible, in the end. But there was a way. It would mean rebuilding sections of the Flea by herself. Ordering equipment from multiple sources, assembling it. Tragan was going to have to go into stasis suspension for some or all of that work, he should not suspect. She would need a gene-engineer, a source matrix …

It could be done. It would be done. She grabbed onto the idea, like a wild horse taking the bit in its teeth, and in her head she ran and ran and ran. Ran from her morals, from her teachings. The voices of her teachers, her parent faded in her mind. She wanted this. She would pay the price for it. Any price.

Carefully, she dragged her nails across Tragan's rippling skin, watching the colours run out around her hands. He was worth it.

She went and checked the temporal inertia readings; it looked like they would still be here another hour or so, relative time. She watched the trail of Ka's ship fade away on the sensors, and thought, ~Tragan, I want to check storage, make sure nothing is ready to shake loose. The journey back might be turbulent. Would you like to watch?~

~No … no. With Your leave, I will sleep, Mistress.~

While he slept, she went into the storeroom. Her fingers skipped past tiny cages, metal folders, plastic pouches, and leather envelopes to draw out a flat rectangular box that had been filed under T. She opened it and revealed a mask. It was designed to resemble a humanoid, the standard two-eye two-ear one-nose model. But it was made of a rather rigid material, as though to conceal the motion of the face under it. She touched the mask carefully; there were a few wrinkles from storage around the eyes, but otherwise it was still perfect on its holding frame.

It was Tragan's mask. The one that had been confiscated from him when the Parakon police took him into custody, so many years ago. Back when he had been humanoid - by a stretch of the phrase. She had arranged to purchase this mask from a police auction, and kept it ever since.

Perhaps she would have a chance to see how he looked in it, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, reviews and critiques welcome!


End file.
